Week III – Getting higher and higher on life. And rooftops.

After the framing of our walls was completed last Friday, this week we dove right into putting up trusses and planks to construct our roof!  Butterflies of heights quickly flew into formation while everyone lent a helping hand.  Doug Nichols has been supervising this week while Monday and Tuesday we were well instructed by Mark Sutton in the fine arts of framing our roof!

Our dutch gable roof was started by reinforcing one side to be able to support the weight of the other trusses as they were installed.  This first truss and the last are called the gables whereas the other trusses are all known as common trusses.  These gable trusses are a bit “beefy”er in there construction and have a definitive difference in the vertical center boards that shape the outside ends of the gabled roof structure.  The other common trusses are designed in such a way that compression and tension direct the majority of the weight towards the supporting beams in the walls rather than buckling inward under extreme pressure.

Once trusses are fitted onto the walls its time to plank the roof.  Planking for our roof was made of rough cut pine, abundant and available as Jeremy previously mentioned due to the pine beetle.  Hurricane ties had to be installed to secure the roof and make sure it doesn’t fly away!  This is possible due to the Bernoulli principle which, simply put, the total pressure of uplift on the roof of a building is the combination of the dynamic pressure of wind and the static pressure of the weight of the structure.  With Andrea’s home now securely anchored, we need only make finishing touches on the planks and add the metal sheeting through tomorrow and Friday.

Posted outside our build site we have a few signs of local businesses that have supported our build and the efforts of Community Rebuilds!  Here’s thanks to the Grand/San Juan Association of Realtors, Walker’s True Value, and Ricks Glass.

Have a lovely rest of the week everyone and don’t hesitate to stop by and check out for yourself the work we do on Duchesne Ave.

P.s. Thanks to all the folks who came out this past Saturday for our first get together at our campus on Millcreek Drive!  It was AWESOME!